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(drums); chordophones, which have vibrating strings (violins, guitars, pianos); aerophones, which produce vibrating bodies of air (clarinets, reed and pipe organs, harmonicas); and electrophones, in which electronic circuits produce sound (electronic organs, sound synthesizers).
The Creation of Music
Music is created by individuals, using a traditional vocabulary of musical elements. In compositionthe principal creative act in musicsomething that is considered new is produced by combining the musical elements that a given society recognizes as a system. Innovation as a criterion of good composing is important in Western culture, less so in certain other societies. In Western music, composition is normally carried out with the help of notation; but in much popular music, and particularly in folk, tribal, and most non-Western cultures, composition is done in the mind of the composer, who may sing or use an instrument as an aid. Creative acts in music also include improvisation, or the creation of new music in the course of performance. Improvisation usually takes place on the basis of some previously determined structure, such as a tone or a group of chords; or it occurs within a set of traditional rules, as in the ragas of India or the maqams of the Middle East. Performance, which involves a musicians personal interpretation of a previously composed piece, has smaller scope for innovation. It may, however, be viewed as part of a continuum with composing and improvising.
The normal method of retaining music and transmitting it is oral or, more properly, aural most of the worlds music is learned by hearing. The complex system of musical notation used in Western music is in effect a graph, indicating principally movement in pitch and time, with only limited capability to regulate more subtle elements such as timbre. Both Western and Asian cultures possess other notation systems, giving letter names of notes, indicating hand positions, or charting the approximate contour of melodic movement.
The Social Role of Music
Music everywhere is used to accompany other activities. It is, for example, universally associated with dance. Although words are not found in singing everywhere, the association of music and poetry is so close that language and music are widely believed to have had a common origin in early human history.
The Function of Music
Music is a major component in religious services, secular rituals, theater, and entertainment of all sorts. In many societies it is also an activity carried on for its own sake. In American society in the late 20th century, for example, one main use of music involves listening at concerts or to radio or records (music for its own sake); another involves the provision of music as a suitable background for unrelated activities such as study or shopping (music as an adjunct to something else). In many societies music serves as the chief entertainment at royal courts. Everywhere, musicians sometimes perform for their own diversion; in some societies, however, this private use of music has been formalizedin southern Africa, for example, special genres and styles are reserved for musicians performances for their personal entertainment.
The most ubiquitous use of music, however, is as a part of religious ritual. In some tribal societies, music appears to serve as a special form of communication with supernatural beings, and its prominent use in modern Christian and Jewish services may be a remnant of just such an original purpose. Another, less obvious, function of music is social integration. For most social groups, music can serve as a powerful symbol. Members of most societies share keen feelings as to what kind of music “belongs.” Indeed, some minorities (including, in the U.S., black Americans and Euro-American ethnic groups) use music as a major symbol of group identity.
Music may serve as a symbol in other ways, as well. It can represent nonmusical ideas or events (as in the symphonic poems of the German composer Richard Strauss), and it can underscore ideas that are verbally presented in operas (notably those of the German composer Richard Wagner), in film and television drama, and often in songs. It also symbolizes military, patriotic, and funerary moods and events. In a more general sense, music may express the central social values of a society. Thus, the hierarchical caste system of India is symbolized in the hierarchy of performers in an ensemble. The avoidance of voice blending in a Plains peoples singing group reflects the value placed on individualism. In Western music the interrelationship of conductor and orchestra symbolizes the need, in a modern industrial society, for strongly coordinated cooperation among various kinds of specialists.
The Musician
In most of the worlds societies, musicianship requires talent, special knowledge or training, and effort, and the view is widespread that a successful musical work or performance is difficult to achieve. There is no evidence that superior musical abilities arise in one society or race as opposed to another; rather, variations in achievement are the result of differences in technology, in the degree of specialization of musicians, and in the value placed on music. Individual talent, however, is recognized among most peoples, and the musical specialist exists everywhere: as a true professional in the West, India, the Far East, and Africa; as an informal leader and singer in folk cultures; and as someone who also has supernatural power in tribal societies. But if music is regarded as indispensable everywhere, the musician has rarely enjoyed great prestige. In certain early societies in Europe and America, for example, musicians were regarded as undesirable social deviants; this remains the case in the present-day Middle East. In many societies music is relegated to outsidersforeigners or members of religious and ethnic minorities. Many modern social systems, including those in the West, inordinately reward the outstanding “star” performer but pay little attention to the average musician. Nevertheless, musicianship in most parts of the world requires long periods of concentrated study, extending in the case of European and Indian virtuosos to some 20 years.
Musical Regions
Each culture has its own music, and the classical, folk, and popular traditions of a region are usually closely related and easily recognized as part of one system. The peoples of the world can be grouped musically into several large areas, each with its characteristic musical dialect. These areas include Europe and the West; the Middle East with North Africa; Central Asia and the Indian subcontinent; Southeast Asia and Indonesia; Oceania; China, Korea, and Japan; and the Americas (Native American cultures). All coincide roughly with areas determined by cultural and historical relationship, but, surprisingly, they do not correspond well with areas determined by language relationships.
The history of Western musicthe one most easily documented because of Western musical notationis conveniently divided into eras of relative stability separated by short periods of more dramatic change. The periods conventionally accepted are the Middle Ages (to c. 1450), the Renaissance (1450-1600), the baroque era (1600-1750), the classical era (1750-1820), the romantic era (1820-1920), and the modern period . Other cultures, less well documented, likewise have experienced change and development (not necessarily always in the direction of greater complexity), so that the simplest tribal musics also have their histories. In the 20th century, however, rapid travel and mass communication have led to a great decrease in the musical diversity of the world.